Wednesday, August 29, 2012

A hero ventures forth
from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous
forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back
from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow
man.

I’ve read several articles recently expressing the viewpoint
that we should view our live and how we live it as a “hero’s journey”. In that
view we begin our journey and encounter various obstacles that we must overcome.
In overcoming those obstacles we grow and become more competent giving us the
resources to overcome even greater obstacles.

While this may be a great metaphor for teaching us
to persevere in the face of adversity there is a counter unspoken message that
since life is a never ending struggle, why try to overcome those obstacles?

In reading those articles I am reminded of the little boy
who went to his first day of school and when ask by his father at the end of
the day “How did it go?” Answered, “Not very well, I have to go back tomorrow!”

While amusing, this child’s eye view of their world can be
instructive. After some period of time you just get tired of striving and look
for a lower level of stress. Even an army is pulled off the line and sent to
rest and recuperate after extended periods of combat.

At the same time, just cruising through life without a
challenge gets boring. The key is to strike a balance between the
obstacle-laden path of the hero’s journey and the clear sailing of an open
road. For business the trick is to challenge your employees with difficult work
and yet give them some less challenging times to allow that period rest and
recovery.

What was the end of Ulysses journey nn the hero’s journey
described in The Odyssey by Homer? He went home to Penelope and his son and
became a gentleman farmer again.

What the most common explanations of the hero’s journey
don’t tell you is that it has an end and that in most cases the end is not 30
or 40 years away. Even Ulysses journey was limited to a few years; remember his
son was still a child when he returned.

You can’t view your entire career as a hero’s journey. It
must be viewed by both you and by your boss as a series of heroic sprints
separated by periods of normal living.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

I just finished a book called Proving You’re Qualified and a
book called Training Yourself: the 21st Century Credential, both by
Charles D. Hayes, and found a huge gap in his premise. I looked into a website called Zero Tuition College and another
one called UnCollege and found that both suffer from the same missing element
as Mister Hayes’ books.

A credential is important not just for the knowledge it
supposedly represents, but for the person you are talking to. Only a small
percentage of the work force will end up starting their own business and
following in the footsteps of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs to succeed without a
degree. Most will end up working for large companies.

While everyone may aspire to start their own business or
work for that super startup, big companies have lots of employees so that is
where the bulk of the jobs are. HR departments in big companies are swamped with
applicants and are scared to death of making a mistake and recommending a “bad”
candidate.

That being true, the poor HR clerk reviewing applicants is
looking for a quick and safe way to wade through that mountain of resumes. The
first thing they can do that is fast and safe is to screen for an accredited
degree. What can be safer than saying to your boss, “She must know how to do
the work, she has a degree in that very thing from XYZ College.”

If you pursue self-education as recommended in both books, how
do you prove to perspective employers that you really can do the work? While a
portfolio (even as an online website) works well for designers, photographers
or artists this non-traditional approach really doesn’t work very well for
engineers or mangers.

While Mr. Hayes is absolutely correct in his ascertain that
everyone will have to invest significant time and energy in continuing their
professional education, even that must come with some kind of recognized
credential. Why? Because when it comes time to assign work or look for the
worker ready for promotion, your boss is going to look for that same safe and
easy differentiator as he or she does when hiring a new candidate.

A qualification that they can point to so that when their
boss asks why they picked that that person, they have some recognized “thing”
to point to; something beyond the selector’s opinion that this is the right
applicant.

While there is much to support the position that far too
many people graduating from college today have memorized facts that they forget
as soon as the test is over, no one has yet come up with a better way to prove
that people can do what they say they can do.

Yes, a person’s demonstrated experience could be used. But
remember that the screener is looking for a fast, safe way to select
candidates. Reading resumes is not fast; you can’t really read a resume in the
time it takes to scan for a degree. It’s not safe; the screener has to make a
judgment call as to which experience is relevant and how complete the experience
seems to be.

Before the current system can be replaced, someone is
going to have to come up with something to replace it that will validate
experience gained outside the current formal classrooms.